Cornerstone Newsletter, February 2010

June Davis — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:54:37 GMT

The Cornerstone

The Foundation Newsletter

Volume 13, Issue 2 February 2010

"The crisis is upon us, friends. Our sport is in trouble. Many of you, that love the game as we do, will look at the crisis like a friend who is in trouble and needs our help. We must not shrink from the task before us, we should welcome it. It is 'our' generation that has been called to the challenge. If not now, when? If not us, who?"

The Foundation

“One World, One Game”

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Letter from the Editor

Olympic Dreams

In just a few short weeks (as of this writing) the XXI Olympic Winter Games will begin in Vancouver. Seventeen days of intense competition in games such as snowboarding, skiing, figure skating, and curling. More than 80 countries will be represented by more than 5500 athletes and officials during these games.

All the hype about the upcoming Olympics kind of got me thinking. These athletes are at the top of their chosen sports. They work and train continuously to be the best that they can be. They not only keep in shape physically but they train their minds in order to be mentally prepared for the challenges they will face during competition. Many of these athletes have trained since they were very young in order for a chance to represent their home country in elite level competition. For any athlete, this, I imagine, is the highest, most prestigious honor.

As a competitor, I think we can all learn something from those athletes that compete at the highest levels. Simple lessons like never giving up on your dreams, set realistic goals and when you achieve them continuing reaching higher, and hard work will always pay off. Imagine what you can do if you just set a goal and stick with it; if you just persevere through the doubt, the struggles and often the pain. If you just work hard, you’ll achieve and your success will help you on your way to your next dreams.

While bowling is not an Olympic sport at this time, the new International Training and Research Facility at USBC in Arlington, TX is displaying the Olympic Rings at the facility as the training center for bowling’s own Team USA. Perhaps this moves bowling one step closer to realizing its own Olympic dreams.

2010 Team USA Team Trials Results

John Janawicz of Winter Haven, Fla., held on for a slim victory, while Brenda Edwards of Mansfield, Texas, pulled away from the field to win the 2010 United States Bowling Congress Team USA Trials.

Janawicz topped the men's field with a 36-game total of 8,168, an average of 226.8, while Edwards finished with 7,890, an average of 219.1, at Sunset Station's Strike Zone Bowling Center in suburban Las Vegas.

The men's championship came down to the final frame as Janawicz watched Professional Bowlers Association exempt player Mike Fagan of Patchogue, N.Y., leave the 1-2-10 on his final shot in which he needed a strike to tie.

Janawicz, who led Fagan by more than 100 pins heading into the final two games, allowed Fagan to have a shot at catching him by shooting 159 and 183 to close out the tournament.

"I feel like I was very fortunate to come away with the win," said Janawicz, a Team USA member in 2007 and 2008. "It's a good thing I had a four-run lead going into the bottom of the ninth because I definitely gave up three runs down the stretch."

Fagan could have won the title outright had he struck on his first shot in the 10th frame, but a stubborn 7 pin made it necessary for him to strike on the fill shot to tie. He finished second with 8,165, three pins behind Janawicz.

"I thought the first one was a very good shot," said Fagan, who earned an automatic spot on Team USA by being among the top three finishers. "On that last shot, I lost it off my hand. The lanes got very touchy and you had to keep your speed soft. Whatever little bit of adrenaline I had didn't help on that shot."

On the women's side, Edwards outdistanced the field in the final block and finished ahead of second-place finisher Kendra Gaines of Orlando, Fla., by 169 pins.

The top three men and top three women in the final standings earned automatic spots on Team USA. Joining Janawicz and Fagan on the men's side was third-place finisher Craig Hanson of Orlando, Fla., while Emily Maier of Wichita, Kan., finished third among the women to join Edwards and Gaines.

The National Selection Committee picked Tennelle Milligan of Arlington, Texas, Diandra Asbaty of Chicago, Cassidy Schaub of Polk, Ohio, and John Szczerbinski of North Tonawanda, N.Y., to round out the final roster for Team USA in 2010.

Heading into the Team USA Trials, 13 players had already secured spots by virtue of their selection earlier this year. Walter Ray Williams Jr., Chris Barnes, Wes Malott, Tommy Jones, Patrick Allen, Rhino Page and Bill O'Neill make up the remainder of the men's team. On the women's side, Stefanie Nation, Shannon O'Keefe, Shannon Pluhowsky, Liz Johnson, Kelly Kulick and Carolyn Dorin-Ballard were selected.

The top two boys and top two girls finishers who are 20 years or younger before Jan. 1, 2010 also earned automatic spots on Junior Team USA. Craig Hanson locked up the top boy’s spot, while Chris Pierson of Waukesha, Wis., was second. For the girls, Jenn Boisselle of Brandon, Fla., and Samantha Hesley of Wellington, Fla., were first and second, respectively.

The National Selection Committee polished off the Junior Team USA 2010 roster by adding Elise Bolton of Merritt Island, Fla., Christine Bator of Warren, Mich., Kyle King of Glendale, Ariz., and Devin Bidwell of Simi Valley, Calif., to the team.

At the USBC Junior Gold Championships in Indianapolis last July, 12 players earned spots on Junior Team USA. The boys group includes Mike Conn, Andrew Koff, Erik Gulbrandson, Chris Bardol, Jacob Peters and T.J. Baral, while the girl’s team includes Maggie Zakrzewski, Josie Earnest, Cassie Leuthold, Brittni Hamilton, Kristie Petravich and Kim Yioulos.

On the horizon: What's ahead for USBC

By: Gianmarc Manzione; USBC Communications

In the past weeks, visitors to BOWL.com have been treated to a look back at the many milestones of the United States Bowling Congress during its first five years, from the historic merger of four major organizations to the return of professional women's bowling to the national spotlight and so many other achievements.

But the end of this first chapter in USBC history means the beginning of another. A look into that future reveals many challenges and opportunities that constitute exciting possibilities for the sport and the bowling industry.

"There has been significant progress in pulling a wide variety of bowling industry constituents together, but there remains a monumental task ahead of us," says USBC Executive Director Stu Upson.

Part of that monumental task, according to USBC President-Elect Darlene Baker, includes striking a balance between the National Governing Body and USBC membership, exploring a wider variety of membership options, and enhancing communication throughout the organization, especially between USBC headquarters and its many valued associations.

"Efforts to promote Team USA and elite bowlers, which is the responsibility of the National Governing Body, have led to some disenchantment of the associations and membership," Baker says. "We also have to provide for our members. We can't be everything to everybody, but we do have to figure out how to meet our responsibilities as the National Governing Body, a membership organization, and a part of the industry."

Outgoing USBC President Jeff Boje sees several challenges.

"Our biggest challenge will be funding the needs of necessary change without sacrificing service to our most loyal members," Boje explains. "The valued core membership and our primary source of funding have become so critically low that minor increases in the membership fee structure are no longer adequate to sustain the organization as it exists today. It is not too late, though. Strategies are in place that can avoid the continuing cycle that has failed us for nearly 30 years. People love to bowl and the USBC can deliver value to a much larger base and in many new and creative ways."

As USBC's next president, Baker also emphasizes new membership programs and initiatives as indispensable to this vision of a more unified and balanced organizational structure, and sees improved communication as an important means of enhancing the USBC membership experience.

"I believe some of the future focus has to be to improve communication, and to look at different membership options. Associations need to be given more direction, and have their role defined," Baker explains. "We can no longer be the same organization we've been, or the organizations before us; and that will be our biggest challenge yet."

While USBC's roots are steeped in the merging of several major organizations under one umbrella, even greater effort at unity -- both within USBC and across the industry as a whole -- is at the forefront of Stu Upson's agenda.

"The sport and industry of bowling is still too fragmented -- men, women, youth, seniors, associations, proprietors, manufacturers, media, and on and on," Upson says. "We are still not at the point of groups and individuals putting aside their own agendas for the greater good of the industry."

"We are asking many people to make fundamental changes in a very short period of time," Boje acknowledges. "We have and will make mistakes. These mistakes will cast doubts and disenfranchise some people along the way. We must not waiver. Love for our sport is our biggest strength. Doubt and fear are our biggest threat."

Only the greatest bowlers in the world pass through here: the Wayne Garber story

By: Gianmarc Manzione; USBC Communications

If you're thinking about giving up on your dreams, try walking a day in Wayne Garber's shoes.

Try sitting where he sat as a doctor told him that his lifelong dream of making a Professional Bowlers Association telecast dissolved the moment he fell down a flight of stairs after a 2007 tournament in Reno, snapping both patellar tendons in his knees. Try spending the next four months on your back as your mind mulls the doctor's admission that never before had he seen a single athlete recover from such an injury.

"I love the game, I don't know what I would do if I couldn't bowl," the Modesto, Calif. native and exempt PBA player says. "If someone told me I couldn't bowl, I would find a way."

Professional bowling may not currently enjoy the cultural prominence of other pro sports, and bowlers are not doing any commercials for AT&T or Cadillac just yet. But Wayne Garber's story confirms that bowling, just like any other sport you want to name, is another way for us to rise above ourselves.

Garber heard such a call all his life. He heard it in the voices of hundreds of people who told him over the years that they would "see him on TV someday."

"I was just like 'OK, whatever. It's never gonna happen. Forget it,'" Garber says.

He heard it in the form of a letter send to him by Jim Gordon, owner of Yosemite Lanes in Modesto where Garber works as the manager.

"He sent me a heart-to-heart letter and said 'You cannot keep going at the weight you're at.' It would have been easy to sit on the bed and feed my face," Garber says of the months he spent laid out after surgery.

But Garber did not just listen to the call; he answered it. His answer was the 20 pounds of extra weight he dropped, the grueling months of incapacitation he spent listening to the growling of his stomach as he refused to indulge the "Pepsi and potato chip fiend" he had been for so long, and even more time in the gym that left him feeling younger than he had felt in years.

Then the call answered him back with words he thought he would never get to hear.

"Chad Murphy, Brand Manager for Columbia, helped me out as we were walking onto the set," Garber recalls of the moment when, at 42 years of age, he finally attained the dream he had given up on when he made the televised finals of the Red, White and Blue Open in Wichita on Jan. 10. "He stopped me and looked at me and said 'You know, only the best bowlers in the world pass through here.'"

No one could have told Wayne Garber that snapping his patellar tendons might ultimately become one of the best things that ever happened to him, but the evidence of how that fall down a hotel stairwell brought him closer to attaining his dream than ever before is too abundant to dispute.

"After being on my back for four months I bowled stiff-legged — probably not too bright — but I was averaging 220 without a knee bend," Garber explains of his return to the sport he loves after the accident that almost took it away from him for good. "I had a conversation with my best friend and told him 'I am bowling better than I ever have. I can't feel my legs; I feel so light on my feet.'"

With less weight to carry around and a fitness regimen that enabled him to perform at a level he had never experienced before, Wayne Garber found himself on the doorstep of his dream.

Last Sunday, before a national audience on ESPN, he opened the door.

Disbelieving bowling fans from coast to coast got their first glimpse of one of the most unorthodox bowling styles to ever be featured on national television, an 11-step approach in which his backswing begins just as he nears the foul line.

"It's a work in progress, I change it over time," Garber says. "You can't argue with the results, but looking at the video there is still a pause there. Maybe that has to do with not being very flexible. I don't bend like I used to."

Mike Scroggins, who ultimately defeated Garber for the Red, White and Blue Open title, agrees. So much so, in fact, that when Garber nearly collapsed to the ground after a crucial late-game shot stood between him and his first national PBA title, Scroggins thought he would have to help Garber up off the floor.

"When I left that stone 8-pin Scroggins told me he was scared that I wouldn't be able to get up," Garber says of that fateful moment in the game. "I got so low in devastation I might have needed help getting up."

But as he did after the prior devastations he overcame to just to make that show he'd dreamed of all his life, Wayne Garber got up on his own just fine. And if he knew the match was out of reach when he got back on his feet, the loss was merely a technicality. He had won the biggest battle of his life before he ever threw a shot that afternoon — the battle against himself.

Cheating…..or, Gamesmanship?

Bowling is played by over 100,000,000 per year – worldwide. Different surveys show that it is the first or second most participated sport in this country, depending on what survey you believe.

Bowling is an activity that can be played by children, ladies, men, senior citizens and the handicapped. It can be organized competition, or you can just do it for fun and recreation.

Bowling is looked upon as two (2) entities; one being recreational and the other being sport. There are also Professional Tours whereas competitors can try to make a living.

There is evidence that a form of bowling took place as early as 10,000B.C. There is also documented evidence that the game was played regularly in 5200B.C.

In this country, many different forms of bowling were played in the early 1800’s. Many groups had many different rules. In 1895, one of the main groups from New York called together other groups to form the American Bowling Congress (ABC). This group set a standard on rules.

In the early 1900’s, many gamblers, hustlers, sharks and other mavericks had many tricks to bend the rules. One of the primary rules initially set by the Congress was the maximum weight of a bowling ball, with the limit being 16-pounds.

The cheaters and hustlers would get two (2) balls – one weighing 18-pounds, and the other weighing 16-pounds and they would cut each ball in half. Then they would glue the two (2) different weighted balls together. The total weight would be legal (16-pounds), but the ball would actually be illegal because one-half of the ball would actually be overweight. It was called a “do-do” ball. Scales were soon developed in order to catch this act of cheating.

There were countless other ways to cheat with the bowling balls by adding holes and adding mercury or other (heavier than rubber) ingredients. These unbalanced balls would be devastating when they hooked into the pins. As time went by, numerous ways of “loading-up” (with plugs) a ball were developed until (in the late 1970’s) the Professional Bowlers Association banned ALL balls that were plugged.

Cheating and “gamesmanship” are very similar.

Bowling balls have revolved from wood to rubber to hard plastic to soft plastic to urethane to resin to reactive resin to todays balls, which are resin with particles in the coverstock. Because bowling is a game that is played on a surface, friction is what all bowlers seek. Friction causes the ball to hook which creates better pin action – thus more strikes – thus higher scores. Some of the types of particles that are added today by manufactures are: ground glass, volcanic ash and diamond dust.

Bowling lanes are oiled with a very lightweight oil in order to protect the surface from the friction that is created from the bowling balls. It is a mineral oil based liquid, which is very

similar to sewing-machine oil. The oil “moves” with each and every shot. The more surface that is on the cover-stock of a bowling ball, the more the oil will move or dissipate. Some types of oils have become heavier in an attempt to add more protection to the valuable lane surface.

Recently on national TV during the warm-up period, one of the bowlers used an extremely aggressive ball to rapidly change his opponents “line-to-the-pocket”. This practice is NOT cheating (per the rules) but it is common and can be used to your advantage.

In match play, if your opponent has an edge and is beating you in a “best-of-7 match”, it is not uncommon to see a bowler use this practice towards the end of a game to “mess-with-his-line”.

In official competition, bowling ball surfaces can not be adjusted by any foreign substance once the competition has started. However, it is not below a competitor to sneak an abrasive pad into his bowling towel to accomplish his secret goal of sanding his ball for more hook.

I have seen bowlers sneak a little talcum powder into an opponents thumb hole.

I have seen bowlers sneak a little hand lotion into an opponents thumb hole.

Messing with someone’s bowling ball can be devastating, as “FEEL” is so important to a player.

This practice is so serious that a rule is in place on the PBA Tour that you can NOT touch another players equipment………….but it is secretly (and slyly) done.

Another defensive “gamesmanship” ploy is done by some (a few) players. They watch and see where their opponent is sliding at the foul-line. Then they slide in that same place and “burn-rubber” with their own heel on their sliding shoe. The sole of the bowling shoe is leather, but the heel is rubber. There is a sinister way of sliding so that you can drag your heal to deposit a small amount of rubber off of your heal to disrupt your opponents slide.

Dripping some sweat in your opponents “slide-area” has also been done by the sneaky. After you make your shot, you look down and allow one bead of sweat (off of your brow) to fall onto his slide path. When he slides on that little bit of rubber (or sweat) it will disrupt his slide and usually throw them off for the whole game…..or the whole day!!!

Another trick is to tell your opponent how great and consistent they are. You tell them during competition that their non-bowling arm is always in the EXACT same position on every shot…and that their pinky finger is pointing in the exact same place, too. Your opponent starts thinking about that and fails to concentrate on what they are doing.

There are many, many ways of gaining an advantage. “Mind games” have always existed and nothing much can be done about it.

Bowling ball advantages are always sought. Rules and Regulations SHOULD take care of that.

CHEATING - GAMESMANSHIP? Hmmmmmmmm…………..

Terrell-Kearney named to Team USA coaching staff

By: Lucas Wiseman; USBC Communications

Three-time Team USA member Kim Terrell-Kearney of Grand Prairie, Texas, has been named assistant head coach of the Team USA program.

Terrell-Kearney, who will be inducted into the United States Bowling Congress Hall of Fame in May, will work alongside Team USA head coach Rod Ross. Both coaches will also oversee the Junior Team USA program.

"Kim has tremendous credentials not only as an athlete but also as a coach," said David Garber, USBC High Performance Director for Team USA and Coaching. "We will utilize the full resources of our USBC Coaching staff to assist Rod and Kim in coaching Team USA and Junior Team USA."

A 10-time professional champion, Terrell-Kearney's most recent victory came at the 2008 U.S. Women's Open. Her other major victories came in the 2002 USBC Queens and the 2001 U.S. Women's Open.

Terrell-Kearney also serves as assistant head coach of the International Training and Research Center, working with Ross, who is the head coach. Before taking that position, she was the head coach at Delaware State University and an assistant coach for Junior Team USA.

"I'm honored and excited by the chance to work with our country's elite bowlers," Terrell-Kearney said. "With the completion of the training center, I look forward to using our new tools to help coach the players in our state-of-the-art facility."

Team USA and Junior Team USA will compete in several events in 2010, including the World Tenpin Bowling Association World Men's Championships, the WTBA World Youth Championships, the Pan American Bowling Confederation Women's Championships and the QubicaAMF World Cup.

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Membership Report

We have members in all 50 states,
and the District of Columbia

We have members in 49 countries, including the United States:

Argentina Australia Bahrain Belgium Brazil Canada China Columbia Costa Rica Denmark Ecuador Egypt Finland France Germany Great Britain Greece Guam Guatemala Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Latvia Malaysia Mexico The Netherlands N. Ireland Netherlands Antilles
New Zealand Panama Philippines Puerto Rico Peru Qatar Scotland Singapore Slovenia South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Thailand Turkey U.A.E. Ukraine Venezuela

Corporate Sponsors

The problems that exist in our Sport are “industry-wide” problems that must be addressed by the entire Industry. The Foundation does all that they can to help, but we can NOT do it alone.

The Foundation has well over 1000-Members who have joined-in to assist. Some Members (Founding and Charter) have paid to show their support. Some Members (Associates) have just lent their “voice”. ALL of the members are important.

Even though The Foundation has NOT actively solicited bowling-related companies for help, some realize the importance of our “Mission” and have come forward with donations. We recognize the following companies for their loyalty and support to bowling.

KEGEL

KAT Travel

I.B.P.S.I.A.

EBN Services

Storm Bowling

Classic Products

Bobs’ Business, Inc.

Vincennes University

BowlersParadise.com

Virtualtournaments.com

Wichita State University

David Driscoll & Associates

International Bowling Industry Magazine

Stars and Strikes Bowling Newsmagazine

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Cornerstone Newsletter, February 2010